Interlude 2
From the ashes of the town you have annihilated with your vengeance, you walk.
You walk and you walk, for the world then was far emptier of humans, their settlements scattered and confined to the places where resources were available, where the wilderness was not so lethal.
Not entirely human, nor entirely the old goddess, you do not die for lack of food and water though your bare feet never stop leaving bloody prints and a starving ache yawns in your core.
The passage of time means nothing. The journey could have taken a matter of days or a matter of weeks until one dusky evening, the specter of raised voices calls as surely as a moth to a flame.
People, you realize, both tempted and afraid. You are so very hungry and people might offer food, might offer shelter. And so you drift closer, spying from the trees.
It is a small encampment, a trio of men who all share the same narrow nose and pinched mouth.
Brothers, maybe, cousins. Fathers and sons.
It has been a hot day, now edging into a warm night, the horizon hazy, the birds quiet.
Several rabbits are smoking over the bare embers of a low fire while the men quietly chat.
One knaps a rock into a fresh arrowhead, another cleans a copper axe.
A hunting party. Gazing upon the roasting rabbits, your mouth waters and your belly cramps. You are so hungry that you abandon your hiding place, creeping into the camp.
A man with a graying beard and tattoos dotting his skin notices you. He straightens from his crouch in surprise and calls out.
The words are foreign nonsense, the time when you can instinctively understand any tongue far in the future.
In those days, it was common for each settlement to have their own distinct way of speaking—so much so that people resorted to hand signals when dealing with strangers, gestures more universal and obvious.
But their speech matters little to you; not when their emotions and futures swirl like a feast of knowledge.
Caution from the tattooed man who called out, who fears they’ve treaded upon contested hunting grounds and are about to be attacked.
Greed from the youth, who envisions his portions suddenly smaller should his elders insist on sharing their food.
Lust and violence from the third man, who dreams darkly of a later point in the night when he can press a hand to your mouth and sate baser desires.
The competing possibilities of the night are suddenly too much.
You stagger, clutching your brow and nearly dropping the spindle.
The limitless fates of an entire town were somehow less daunting than confronting these three simple humans.
This cloud of opportunities is alive, imbued with passion and despair, anxiety and bliss.
You want to seize it like the freshly shorn fleece of a sheep and wrap yourself in it like a fire-warmed blanket; you want to shred it with your hands and feast upon the remnants.
Your hunger soars, your body lusting for a substance you don’t know how to consume.
The tattooed man rises to his feet, and you draw the spindle, gripping it tightly in your hand. Confusion only briefly delays him and then he walks toward you, his palms open in a gesture to convey he means no harm.
Unfortunately for him, you do not feel the same. Overwhelmed by craving, energy surging through your veins, you lunge at him, cracking the spindle over his head and riding his body to the ground.
His companions cry out in shock, rushing to his aid as you desperately lick the blood pouring from a gash on his skull. But it is little more than bare crumbs, a shadow of what you need. You rip at his throat with your overgrown fingernails, with a strength you shouldn’t possess. He screams.
“Appa!” the youngest hunter shouts, grabbing your shoulder and trying to wrench you away. From the corner of your eye, you notice the third man. He hefts his axe . . .
The mother in you shrinks back, what was mortal in your patchwork soul recognizing a killing blow.
But the goddess is still enthralled with their futures, still spinning.
And so you don’t retreat as much as you remove ourselves from the future the men anticipate: the coming moments of bludgeoning this lunatic woman and trying to save their father, their brother.
With their emotions already heightened, it is easy enough to spin a new thread.
You are next.
The boy doesn’t see a woman: he sees his uncle bringing the axe down upon his neck and making off into the trees with all their tools and food. His uncle has always been jealous, is disliked in the community, and might fare better striking out on his own. He is his uncle’s next victim.
The man has never trusted his nephew; the boy is reckless, prone to strange fits.
He doesn’t see a woman, he sees that his axe has slipped and dealt his older brother a grave accident.
He sees that reckless, rash boy coming at him with his knapping stone, striking him and again and again.
His nephew will murder him in misguided vengeance.
It matters not whether they directly blame the other for the elder’s murder, or understand what happened. There is blood and terror in the air and so they throw themselves upon each other like snarling, rabid dogs. The man gets the first blow, burying his axe in the boy’s gut.
It’s a fatal strike and yet the boy, wet with his father’s blood—his rage and grief are stronger.
Familiar. Powerful enough to give him one last burst of strength as he brings down the knapping stone on his uncle’s skull.
Again and then again, the man finally falling dead.
The boy gasps, letting out a sad little sound as he touches his wrecked belly, blood leaking through his fingers.
He glances up, seeming to see you for the first time. His dark eyes are bright with pain.
Part of you is aghast. But as the first man dies, the boy’s vengeance sated, the bliss and power that fill you . . . oh, you shiver with delight, with satisfaction. The ruined city was but a morsel in comparison to this feast. This . . . sensation that you will chase until the ends of the earth.
And so you do. Turning your back on the dying boy, you prowl for your next meal.
As can be imagined, rumors of a crone stained with grave dirt, who leaves bloody footprints leading backward to scenes of madness and slaughter, spread with each death.
Legends circulate, terrifying stories told around campfires and courtyards.
Some people begin to leave offerings: small animals sacrificed in your honor, burnt wool wrapped around bloody spindles.
Pinpricks of power, protective charms that do nothing to dissuade you from possible prey.
You were akin to a wild animal in those days; each death, each moment of forced false vengeance sating you only briefly.
But it is enough to draw attention.
You are not all-powerful. If you do not require food and slumber, you do need some respite; you hunt until weariness overtakes you and then rest, preferring to curl in the hovel of trees in the deepest forests, beneath rotting trunks like a grub cowering from sunlight.
Which is where you are discovered one morning.
It all happens too quickly for you to process, let alone defend yourself.
The spindle is kicked away from your hands and then blows descend, axes and spears and crude wooden hammers.
The pain is searing but brief, whatever passes for your soul detaching as the body of your birth, the body that bore and nourished your children, is beaten until unrecognizable, limbs torn away, head severed.
They burn what remains beneath the leafy canopy.
We—I—you feel nothing but a vague awareness.
Until one man attempts to take a hammer to the spindle.
That you feel, like the thrust of a spear.
But it does nothing, the wooden spindle somehow impervious to their hammer and axes.
To all their weapons. The triumph of their success edges into fear.
It is getting very dark in the black woods as the sun dips toward the horizon, your blood stinking like something long decayed from where it stains the tree trunks.
There are whispers upon the wind, the imagined weeping of your victims, their ghosts still clinging to the unbroken spindle.
Unnerved, their leader casts the spindle into the smoldering fire and they steal away.
But the spindle does not burn. Instead it rests unscathed among your charred bones. Seasons pass, dead leaves and windswept soil falling upon its dark wood, but it will not decay.
And it will not remain abandoned forever.